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Video Game Design

Make something do something

October 26, 2017

“I did that!” - What a great feeling I get from saying this, and so should you, especially in a creative sense. The biggest and most reassuring advice I can give to anyone starting out in any creative industry is to never feel like you aren’t good enough or that there’s always someone who can do it better, don’t let that stop you, this time it’s about you, what can you achieve? Whatever it is, no matter how large or small you WILL feel good about achieving it.

My first ever attempt at programming was at college with Visual Basic Studio, where the whole class (some 20 students) were all given the task to create a button that displayed a message on screen (“hello world”) once the user clicked it. Yes, this wasn’t exactly interesting or unique and yes all the other students managed to pull it off too but I didn’t care, I did that, It was ME who programmed that single, solitary red button show the message once somebody clicked it, and it felt GREAT!

Never doubt the power of "Hello World"

Starting out small is generally the first thing you hear when people ask for beginner's advice and this is (for the most part) true if you want to feel yourself progress and get the most out of your own accomplishments. I’m sure many developers have stories of when they first started out having huge game ideas that included skill trees, 50+ weapons, online multiplayer and various overly ambitious features. Don’t get me wrong though, it is a lot of fun to delve into your own brain and splosh it out once in awhile, it’s an experience we generally look back on to see how we’ve progressed to better, more realistic goals. Check out this genuine proposalwe had emailed to us from someone (by the looks of things) starting out in the game developing world.

What I’m getting at is that you should never consider a new challenge too out-of-reach, and absolutely don’t get discouraged when you see others’ work and think “there’s no point, this person is better than me”. A square that I programmed to move with arrows keys was the first thing I ever created in GM:Studio back in the day and guess what, it felt just as good then as it does now when things I make, well, work, so go ahead, make something do something!